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As New Yorkers, how we talk to cab drivers depends on our mood. One day you could be in a hurry, staring at Google maps obsessing over your estimated arrival time, and nothing but a “take the bridge–no! The tunnel!” is shared between you. Other days you might be chatty, in a good mood with time to kill. You offer up a nugget of information about yourself, where you’re going or how your day was, and the driver does the same. Next thing you know, you’re having a conversation, for better or for worse. Much of the time, you find yourself silent in the backseat, as though no one is even driving you at all. Frequently I have found myself at my destination, tequila on my breath, mascara running down my face, only to realize I cried the whole way there. Cabs should add a crying fee. I’d feel a lot less guilty that way.

This particular morning – at 8:15am, hungover in a Dodge Caravan and on my way to far-out Queens – I was quite verbal. Charming, really. I had information to glean.

“So, what would you do if you found someone’s cell phone in here?” I asked my driver, Javier, whose broad shoulders and buzzed head peeked around the seat-back. He seemed to be in a cheerful mood, and it was a good thing, because I was about to take him on a little adventure.

“When riders forget stuff I let them call me. They have my number because of the app, ya know. You lose your phone?”

“Yep, that’s why the request said ‘James’ when you picked me up. Had to order this car from my boyfriend’s phone.”

I laughed. The delirium from my hangover had the pleasant side effect of a sense of humor during my time of stress. It was that part of the morning-after where you don’t know if you’re still drunk or losing your mind from withdrawal symptoms. On the one hand, I wanted nothing more than to take off the ratty hoodie I was sweating in, sleep for 14 hours then shower a few times, but on the other hand, I had to track down this phone to survive. I was on a mini-mission.

“Left it in a yellow cab, though.” I leaned my head on the glass.

“Oh, a yellow cab. Well those are a different story,” Javier said in his gravelly voice. “When I used to drive cabs I’d find things all the time. We take ‘em back to the dispatch. Did you get the medallion number?”

He looked at me in the rearview as he merged onto the BQE. I shook my head.

“Young people never pay attention. Always get the medallion number,” he scolded me. I felt like he was my uncle doing me a favor, picking me up from a high school party, giving me a talking-to while still helping me cover my ass.

Instead, I was leading him on a potential wild goose chase to Flushing, where according to GPS my iphone 7+ I loved so dearly was sitting in the driveway of a single family home with 3% battery life.

“Do you remember the driver at least? What race was he? How old?”

“I can’t remember. I was pretty tipsy.” I racked my brain. “He might have been a young.”

“All right, all right. We’ll get your phone back, don’t worry.”

I cracked the window and took a deep breath of polluted air to calm my nausea. I tend to get carsick, and if given the option I’d rather take the subway. But I was racing the clock here. If my phone was really at the cab driver’s house, I had to get there before he went back out to work for the day. If he left, my phone would die shortly after. If my phone died, I might never be able to track it down.

“You said you got home late last night. What time?”

“Around midnight I think?”

“Yeah, you were probably his last ride for the night. He probably just went home. He probably drives twelve to twelve, or two to twelve. Probably owns his own cab. If you had the medallion number this would be easy.”

There was, statistically speaking, absolutely no chance of me having caught the medallion number the night before. The evening had begun, like so many of them do, as a Friday night happy hour between fed-up coworkers. One of those nights where with every glass of wine a new grievance was aired about our employer. New dirt was dug up. So while I’d intended to leave the outing before dinner and take myself home to Chinese takeout, I’d sort of forgotten that intention by drink number four, and decided to have 3 more glasses as my dinner instead.

I’ve since been told that as my colleagues and I were rounding our fourth bottle of wine, someone made a joke so uproarious that I dramatically threw my head back in laughter. I did this with such force that I fell backwards out of my chair, hitting my leg on the table and the back of my head on the concrete floor. I was kindly escorted out, and tossed in a cab with, I could only assume, my belongings in tow. Unfortunately, I was blacked out for the portion of the evening between the fall and reaching my apartment door. I blame good sauvignon blanc, a corporate credit card and/or a possible concussion.

I was able to pay for my cab with no problems, but forgot to put my giant phone, in its bright pink phone case, back into my fucking purse. When I reached my apartment, I had a moment of panic. A panic I’ve had hundreds of times before where it turned out my phone was just in the sheets or in my coat pocket or in my hand the whole time. Except this time it was not. So I got a stomach flip. A bad one. 16 ounces of sauvignon blanc and stomach acid came up right on my living room floor. I wiped up the puke, ran outside, and jumped in a cab to my boyfriend’s house. I mean, ALONE without a PHONE? I wasn’t safe.

“You young people just haven’t seen enough to really be responsible. Once you get to be my age…” Javier trailed off. There was considerable traffic on the BQE for a Saturday morning, and the sun was beating down hard for mid-February. I coughed. I could feel my throat burning still from acid reflux. My headache was ramping up, too. Javier took an exit. I don’t remember which one.

“You’re right,” I said, ashamed. “I should have known better.” And I really, really should have. I had destroyed my first iPhone three years earlier, on a vacation to Tokyo when, after a night of karaoke and highballs, I’d attempted to wash away my hangover in the tub of our Airbnb. I’d then unknowingly proceeded to flood the bathroom in 3 inches of water, where my iPhone lay drowning. I spent the rest of that vacation pissed at myself, no way to contact friends or family. I’d learned what it was like to lose my pictures, my alarm clock, a thing I’d spent hundreds on, my mode of communication, a part of me. I had mourned.

And that wasn’t the first time, either. I’d had blackberries get rained on, spilled coffee on flip phones, had more than one phone get run over by a car. I’d vowed Tokyo would be the last time I broke a phone doing something stupid, but here I was, a whole decade after my first Sanyo was crushed by the wheel of a mini-van, doing the same damn thing. Humiliation is such insult to injury when you’re already hungover.

“My stepdaughter doesn’t even have a phone right now,” Javier shared, turning on the radio to some station playing Metallica. “She’s your age.”

“No? How does she survive?” I fake chuckled, annoyed at my tone deaf attempts to make small-talk.

“Well, I bought her one and she lost it. And it’s happened to her before. So that’s it. She has to accept the consequences for now.”

“Maybe she will appreciate a phone when she buys it herself.” There I go again, feigning wisdom.

“She can’t afford one.”

I felt like a douche, and I felt for his step-daughter. And I also knew my advice probably wasn’t so true anyway. I’d spent money on my phone and still fucked up. Maybe young people just fuck up, maybe it’s what we do. Then again, I wasn’t that young anymore. I wondered how old I’d have to be before I stopped making that excuse for myself. 30?

We started up a main road, first passing big warehouses then winding up side streets between old brick high rises with teeny tiny windows. Elderly women bustled around the neighborhood with carts full of laundry and groceries, taking advantage of the beautiful morning. I’d always love going out to Queens, with its wide streets and strip malls – you can see more of the sky there. It’s an unfamiliar place, different but only slightly. Like taking a field trip off-campus.

Javier and I struck a deal that once we reached my destination, he’d keep my Lyft “meter” running and wait for me while I rang the doorbell. If, say, no one answered and he drove away, I’d have to find a ride home with no phone in the middle of random Flushing. Or worse, what if someone did answer the door but he was a MURDERER? I wouldn’t be able to evade him, not in this physical state. Javier agreed. We pulled up to the house where, sure enough, there was a cab parked right out front. Javier stood guard outside the Dodge while I approached on foot.

I rang the doorbell. I rang it a couple times. It was evil of me, honestly. If some stranger rang my doorbell at 9am on a Saturday because of some dumb mistake they made, I’d…well I’d probably be nice to their face because confrontation is intimidating, but I would be very much nonplussed under the surface.

An old woman opened the door, just a crack at first, and I explained my situation. She went upstairs to get her husband, who she said was still sleeping (I’m an asshole!) and he came downstairs in his pajamas and slippers. He was not young, but in his 60s or 70s, and white, with an accent. Maybe Russian. I’d might as well never seen him in my life.

“Yeah, I’ve got your phone here,” he said, shuffling past me and down the front walkway to his cab. He reached in, opened the glove compartment, and there it was. My beautiful iPhone 7+. Unscathed but for battery life and a few minor scratches. I thanked him, probably should have tipped him a little extra but it didn’t occur to me at the time, and then turned back to Javier.

“I GOT IT!” I cheered, waving my phone. I skipped back to the Dodge where we exchanged high-fives, and then slumped into the backseat again, relieved.

As we drove off, I could feel my body submitting to the pain of the hangover. I could finally relax now and let it take me.

“So,” Javier peered at me in the rearview again. “Did you catch his medallion number?”

“Uh-uh,” I mumbled, barely listening, my head now buried in my notifications. “You wouldn’t happen to have an iPhone charger, would you?”

Having a blog where you talk about getting drunk and being bad at your job is one of the hardest things a person can do.

Ugh ok fine shut up. I know. I need to stop waiting so long between posts. Literally dozens (less than one dozen) of people have been urging me to post a story lately, and I’ve wanted to, but the longer I wait, the more things pile up and change and I don’t know where to begin.

And girl. When I say things have changed…woo. Have they changed.

My last post was all about self-love, and growing up, and trying to focus on doing great work. I talk about that stuff a lot. And I don’t have any less to say about those topics than I always do, but I do want to save the nitty gritty of my life as it is now — a beautiful disgusting mess, like a perfect sandcastle that some little kid took a runny diarrhea on — for another time. All I’ll say for now is that I am no longer the Settled-Down-Soccer-Mom-In-Training-Ass-Bitch I was a few months ago, and I’m back on the scene, so watch the fuck all the way out. That is all I will say. Plus, I told all the guys I’ve been hooking up with recently that I wouldn’t blog about them. Ha ha ha ha.

Instead, I’d like to take you back with me to a trip I took before things went awry, to an island on a different side of the world, called FUCKING MAUI YEAH THAT’S RIGHT I WENT TO MAUI AGAIN THIS PAST FEBRUARY. LITERALLY WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?

Let’s begin.

Oh wait, one more thing – I’m writing this on my phone right now because I don’t have wifi yet in my new apartment (sometimes when you break up with the person you’re living with you have to get one of those) so shut the heck up about my typos.

Ahem. Anywho.

It all started when — fuck, how did it start? I think it was, as it always is, with my brother Nate planting the seed over text that he’d soon be traveling somewhere exotic:

“Available Feb 20-27?”

It’s always that simple. And my response is usually “Um, working? And being so busy raising these two cats, and practicing comedy in a room full of strangers, and ignoring the fuck out of my blog. Like, do I look like a person who has free time? My life is fully booked and I am not okay.”

To which he usually responds “I have miles.”

So, I took an entire week off work in February (can’t complain about that PTO) and spent the weeks leading up to my trip slathering myself in tanning lotion and trying on bathing suits in my bathroom at 1AM. I was concerned because I had eaten nothing but Chick Fil A for the past two months, and I wanted to look sexy on a resort that I knew was just going to be filled with retirees and honeymooners. What I’m saying is, I wanted to look sexy for instagram.

I don’t think I have Seasonal Affective Disorder. I think I’m just always affected, and cold weather is an extra annoyance. Either way, I cannot tell you how excited I was to pack my duffle with bras and coochie-cutters and take a flight to Someplace, Arkansas, then LAX, then Maui, while FaceTiming my fake-ass drunk-ass jealous friends at every layover with a shit-eating grin on my face. I didn’t even mind how uncomfortable my back gets on long flights in “the back of the plane,” as Nate always refers to coach. Or how expensive the airport margaritas are that I always insist on drinking. I was living, I was looking cute, I didn’t have a coat on, and most importantly I was not checking my email.

Arriving in Maui is always fun. The airports are open air which never fails to blow my mind, and then I get to take a taxi — or this time, a shuttle — to the hotel with some very talkative driver who is originally from Milwaukee but has lived on the island for 35 years and since lost the ability to read human facial cues. It was clear as day in this particular driver’s rearview that I was not in the mood to chat about his childhood after my 24 hours of travel time, but was instead more concerned about why he’d made four wrong turns and couldn’t stop swerving onto the shoulder of this mountainside highway. But I survived.

I made it to the Marriott Ocean Club (which everyone kept pronouncing like it rhymed with Harriet. What the fuck is that about?) on Ka’anapli beach which is where Nate’s conference was. Yes, he was there for a conference. Yes, he was able to expense all of this. And no, I would not take his job if you offered me a lifetime of luxury because what he does for a living is outside of my realm of comprehension not to mention my ability to remain sane (anesthesia).

One thing my brother and I do have in common, though, is a strong affinity for alcohol. So the first thing we did that night was find the nearest bar/restaurant open at midnight – a feat more difficult than you’d imagine considering I thought the whole point of Maui was to get wasted and eat all the foods and stay up late partying. Turns out it’s mostly old people.

You know who does party? The wait staff after a long day of serving tourists. And when we arrived at a nearby beach bar that’s exactly what was going down. We rolled into this unusually lit locale, past the 4×4 pickups in the parking lot, to find sunburned brahs throwing back shots and heckling the bartender, a petite surfer girl with long mermaid hair who appeared to be training on her first day. She also appeared pretty drunk herself. We sat back and enjoyed our beers, along with the view of the hazing session, and I updated Nate on the happenings of my millennial New York life.

Then the crowd starting getting a little too drunk for my taste. I know that sounds fake coming from me, but seriously – looking around I would swear every guy in that bar had dateraped someone at least once. This was further proven when they screamed at the bartender to the point that she had a breakdown and walked out (a little dramatic, though, I will say) and then again when one of them tried and failed to hit on me.

“Hey, you’re cute. Let me buy you a drink.”

*pointing to my brother* “I’m here with someone.”

“Fuck you, bitch. You’re not that hot anyway.”

The verbiage of rape culture at its finest, no?

So we left, and tucked ourselves in to the sounds of the ocean. Overall, not a bad start to the vacay.

To say that a lot happened over the next couple of days wouldn’t be entirely accurate. Instead, it was mostly nothing: $5 mimosas all morning, poolside maitais and cranberry cocktails, hammocks and sushi, noodles, Hawaiian box lunches. That sort of thing. A tropical penguin sanctuary here, a whale watching boat trip there. And when Nate’s friend Mel arrived, we met her at the grocery store where she greeted us with a handle of Titos under each arm. We’d been gloriously unproductive. I had sand in my hair and salt on my skin.

Although I’d taken a week off work, this was still a short trip due to all the travel time. I only had 3 full days on the island. And by the third, I was determined to hike the famous 13 Crossings trail Nate and I tried to complete on our last trip, but failed for various reasons. We just had to revisit it, Nate because he’s a perfectionist, and me because I’ve never swam in a fucking tropical waterfall before and there was one at the end of this hike.

So we strapped our backpacks on, decided to leave before sunset and not get wasted this time, and after a couple hours we finally made it. The water was freezing but it was completely worth it. I’m not even that mad that Mel’s photos of us are just mediocre.

So here’s where it starts getting complicated. As we came up on the last 24 hours of my time there, I just started stuffing every delicious food and drink items in my mouth that I could. First, I washed down some of that stream water I swallowed with fish tacos, rice, beans and guac, 2 beers and 3 vodka cranberries. Then the next morning I thought I’d have a delicious Hawaiian breakfast of, like, rice with meat, gravy and avocado on top. I don’t really know what that was called, but it sure was danky kang. Then, since my flight was at 6pm that night, it seemed like the smartest thing would be to finish off the vodka, then buy more, and finish that off too.

So we did. And I packed up my stuff, got in the rental car around 3:45, and headed for the airport where I was to be dropped off so Mel and Nate could finish their vacation in peace. But there was SO much traffic. Way more than we’d anticipated. If I hadn’t been so fucked up and singing Mariah at the top of my lungs with my hands out the window, I would have been really nervous about missing my flight. But I figured, fuck it. I just have to get through security and run to the gate. I’ll probably make it with just 5 minutes to spare, but what are they gonna do? Leave me in Maui? Pfft.

So anyway, they left me in Maui. And because I was a really drunk white girl who had never missed a flight before, I started to cry.

“But it’s right there! I can see the plane! Please!”

“I’m sorry but they’ve already pulled back from the gate. We can get you on another flight that departs in 5 hours, connects in Dallas and arrives in Newark.”

“Newark??!!??!”

I begrudgingly took my boarding pass they were so gracious to give me for the flight I didn’t even deserve, and walked over to a corner to whine. I called Nate –

“Aw sorry boo, but it doesn’t really make sense for us to come get you. You’ll just have to wait there.”

What a fuckin fail. I was wasted. My stomach was all bubbly from the food I ate or the alcohol or the giardia I contracted in the waterfall. I was in Maui but I wasn’t in Maui. I was in tropical limbo with a bunch of tourists from the Midwest, only to return to a winter wasteland back in New York. My serotonin was at dangerously low levels, my blood-alcohol at the opposite, and all I wanted was to be in my bed with my two cats and my boyfriend who I missed so freakin much.

So I slept. I slept on the floor of a major airport walkway. I slept across chairs between jabbering family members. I slept with my mouth open, heart racing, sucking in oxygen with a strain that rivaled even the most withered of surrounding geriatrics.

And then I needed nachos. I had a bit of money left, so I dragged myself across the carpet to the nearest Airport Restaurant Bar and Grill to order some.

Waitress: “Just so you know, the cheese on these is Velveeta.”

God bless this woman for trying to warn me. But she didn’t understand how hungover, and still drunk, and far too depressed I was to truly hear her.

“Bring it on.”

Now, when I tell you this was some of the most vile shit I have consumed in my entire life, please know there’s not a lie to be found. However, not only did I finish it – oh no – I licked the plate clean, in what will probably be one of the saddest scenes ever witnessed by anyone on that high school volleyball team two tables over.

I never said I make good decisions. I would never lie like that.

It should come as no surprise to you, then, that about 30 minutes later I found myself running to the bathroom at full speed with all of my luggage to spew yellow liquid into the toilet. I was surprised, though. For some reason I hadn’t seen this coming. I suppose alcohol and sun exposure give me rose-colored glasses. But, you know, the kind of rose-colored glasses that make you think to yourself “You’re gonna die anyway, you idiot. Who gives a shit? Eat the Velveeta Puke Chips.” And you know, there was once a time, just a few years ago, where I could eat weird nachos and not immediately become a weapon of mass destruction. Not anymore.

I got out as much as I could, but the saliva in my throat and the rumbling in my belly told me I was still experiencing something digestively volcanic.

“This is the final boarding call for American Airlines flight to Dallas Fort Worth.”

Fuck. Once again, I dragged my bags down the carpeted walkway to the gate and joined the queue to board, with a very suspicious look on my face as I tried not to faint or shit on anyone.

Once I got to my seat, I thought things might calm down. I tried putting my head between my legs, I tried sleeping — no chance. As the lights dimmed and our in-flight presentation of The Peanuts Movie began, my body realized she’d had it. The color drained from my face and my vision started to go white, so I folded forward out of my chair and booked it to the lavatory.

So.

Ever had diarrhea on an airplane before? Yeah. It really sucks.

But I bet you haven’t had diarrhea on an airplane while SIMULTANEOUSLY projectile vomiting into the tiny sink next to you with no signs of stopping. I honestly thought I was going to die in that tiny, plastic, stinky room as I writhed, choked, barfed and gasped for what must have been…could it have been hours? Days even.

Somehow, though, I survived. I slept the rest of the way, and when I got to Dallas I spent what remained of my travel money on pepto bismol and Dramamine, and flopped on the floor next to the phone charging station to text my boo and eat airport mac n cheese. Again, I don’t make the best decisions. You guys know this by now.

So that was that. A wonderful trip that ended poorly and probably could have been planned better.

Sometimes things go wrong in paradise, but I’d do it all again.

When I landed back in New York, James and I were so excited to see each other. And then a few days after that, things fell apart. I hadn’t seen it coming. It was no one’s fault, it just happened. One minute we were together, and the next we weren’t.

You know, breaking up is a lot like trying to sleep in a busy airport. It’s lonely, it’s isolating, you’re stuck biding time. Everyone around you is making noise and you’re too exhausted to move.

But when you open your eyes, if you’re brave enough, you can go anywhere you want.

A few Wednesdays ago, while sputtering through an afternoon at work like a car outta gas, I received one of my weekly invitation forwards from my friend Moe. Since we met six years ago, and maybe even a few months prior, my social life has been at least in part guided by the compass that is Moe’s infinite RSVP list. That is, when I’m trying to have a social life. With my just too typical full time job/full time relationship/full time couch potato combination, I’m pretty easily dissuaded from going out to bars and clubs, and have instead been drawn to daytime events that involve more of an activity, where I can (maybe) burn some calories, and give myself a new story to tell beyond “you wouldn’t believe the dumb thing I did when I was drunk!” (which, like me, is getting old). I often still end up drunk, but it’s usually now obscured by the exciting new Experience-With-A-Capital-E I’m having!

Some examples of this that you missed this summer include the following:

1. Visiting the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens
Remember flowers? I didn’t – not after this past New York winter. Cue the first warm weekend in NYC, and very crowded yet romantic outing was had for thousands.

Real person (not staged). Welcome to Fancy Brooklyn.

2. Showing my Mom Around New York

One great way to realize you’re not as old and lazy as you think you are is to try to take your out-of-town parents around the city. Very quickly, you realize other people don’t actually think it’s a “normal commute” to walk 6 miles every day, and before you know it you’re dragging your poor mother behind you because it would be “a shame” for her to not walk over the Williamsburg Bridge to your Greenpoint apartment, all the way from the West Village. She still knows how to have fun better than I do though. Can’t deny that.

3. Roof Chilling
This is the point of summer in New York. Thankfully, I live in the cheapest (too expensive) apartment of a very tricked out building with rooftop views for days. In my world, this counts as doing something.

4. A Very Martha’s Vineyard Memorial Day
My older brother has a cottage on Martha’s Vineyard where I like to go pretend to be fabulous sometimes. It’s fun to guzzle vodka cranberries all day, ride twenty miles on a bike down a busy narrow road, spend hundreds of dollars on lobster, and embarrass yourself in front of strangers you’ll never see again, all while getting to say words like “Aquinnah.” Plus there’s just something about not having money and pretending to have money that lets me feel like I’ve truly “made it.” If there were a school that taught twenty-something white kids how to be adults, they would have a class on this. Also, MV is just beautiful. One thing I don’t recommend, though, is driving up from NYC on a holiday weekend and returning 3 days later (like we did). But if you do, you simply must stop at The Lobster Pot in Wareham, MA on your way back.

5. Attending My First Shabbat Dinner
Can you really call yourself a New Yorker until you go to one of these? I’m not a religious person, nor do I have any Jewish lineage, so the concept was pretty unfamiliar to me. James’ friend and coworker was kind enough to invite us to his weekly ritual, which involved some praying, some dank food, a lot of Kosher wine, and a lot of jokes about Billy Joel and Seinfeld. Oh, and really beautiful views of the Upper West Side. If it sounds like cliché, that’s because you’re jealous.

6. Attempting to Adopt a Dog
This was a really sad week after Memorial Day when James and I attempted to adopt this one-eyed beagle from a shelter in Staten Island but didn’t get approved because our apartment was too small. Probably for the best – it wasn’t well thought out. But it was still a very sad experience so I’m not going to post a photo of him. I’m not ready.

7. Turnt-ing up in Wrightsville Beach, NC
The classic thing I do every year with my family. Again, just more chilling, lots and lots of food, and lots of Tito’s vodka. I easily gained 10 pounds in the week we were on vacation, and only got a little sunburned. The most memorable event of the evening was when (relatively sober, mind you) I had a margarita at Tower 7 Baja Mexican Grill that immediately caused all the color to drain from my face, sending me running through the restaurant to yarf uncontrollably in the bathroom. I didn’t even make it to the toilet. I spent about 15 minutes with my arm in a stopped-up sink scooping up the puke and throwing it in the garbage can. Then I washed my hands and went and ate a plate of enchiladas. If any of the employees from Tower 7 are reading this now, I’m sorry for hogging the bathroom and leaving such a nasty mess. The margaritas were really strong, so it’s kind of both our faults. Also thanks for reading my blog, I hope you like it.

An Adult Beach Party

8. Trying to Grow My Own Vegetables

This is the story of how for two months, I had two beautiful baby plants named Kale and Cilantro. The cilantro died quickly because it doesn’t like rain, but the kale grew huge and beautiful like elephant ears and produced delicious salads until the evil Building Managers made us move it so they could do “landscaping” (a nicer way of saying they mowed down all the trees and greenery in the courtyard to put in a concrete patio that serves no purpose whatsoever). I put the kale in the backyard of the church next door and haven’t gone to check on it since. I have to climb a fence to get there and I’m afraid the catholics will look at me weird. Clearly, being a cool hipster grown up is super fun and I’m great at it.

9. A Very Martha’s Vineyard Fourth of July
The Vineyard again, you say? But of course! Except this time we took a 5 hour Megabus to Boston after work, “slept” over at my brother Nate’s insanely clean apartment, and left the house at 6 the next morning to meet a group of Boston’s drunkest medical professionals and take a BOAT to the vineyard. It was beautiful ride, for the part of it that I wasn’t entirely seasick and exhausted. But we were livin’ large, so I can’t complain. Of course, on the way back, we took the $200-a-ticket Seastreak Ferry, which takes you directly from the island of Martha’s Vineyard to the island of Manhattan. What they don’t tell you is that it bounces almost the entire 4 hour ride, leaving all the noob passengers panicked and buckled over with nausea. That is, unless they were smart enough to take dramamine and fall asleep. I was not. I spent the majority of the ride escorting barfing strangers to the bathroom and listening to the Pirate’s of the Caribbean soundtrack in my headphones, laughing at what I’d gotten myself into.

10. Hitting Up Broadway
Another thing adults do together is attend “Broadway Shows.” You see, Broadway is a long avenue in Manhattan, the middle section of which is home to giant screens with advertisements on them, every chain restaurant you could ever imagine, and lots and lots of tourists. There are also these big rooms called “theaters” where people wear costumes and dance and sing at you. Sometimes the dancing and singing is rather funny, and in rare cases the dancing and singing is funny and super offensive. One of these rare cases was Book of Mormon, the Tony Award-sweeping musical my boyfriend took me to see. A “Tony” Award is when legendary Broadway actor Tony Danza decides that your play is super good and he gives you a sticker.

11. Taking a Sober Month
Sometimes you gotta take a month to remember who you are – the less ridiculous, more real you – so you can put your best self forward and figure out how to find strength from within. And that’s what I did, for most of July and the beginning of August, by taking a break from my summer booze binge. I guess I partly succeeded? I remembered who I was, I think, but I didn’t exactly find the strength so much as find out where I needed it. Ever tried going to a work party where everyone’s tipsy except you? To call it “unbearably awkward” would be an understatement, at least for me. More about this another time.

12. Buying a Bike

One thing I did learn from my sober month was that I, like many people, use alcohol as a way to face certain fears…and then other fears I mostly just try and avoid. Who wants be like that? One of the biggest categories of fear in my life – an umbrella of fears, if you will – is the fear that I’ll be bad at something, which has stopped me from boldly pursuing a lot of shit I’ve wanted to do. Like ride a bike in the city, for example. Hannah has an awesome bike and no one to ride it with, and I was determined by the end of the summer to accompany her out to Jacob Riis Park – on two wheels. Luckily, I happened to find the perfect bike right when I had the guts to buy one, and I rode out there with her the next day. As you can see, it was a little overwhelming for us in the heat. We took the train home, but we felt totally great about ourselves anyway.

13. Going to Cat Camp

Remember in Clueless when Cher and Ty wore shortatards, did Buns of Steal together in Cher’s living room, and talked about the self-help books they wanted to read? And then Cher was like “we should probably do something good for mankind or the planet for a couple of hours.” Well, I think we can all agree the best stuff to do is stuff that’s fun, but that also benefits society. Which is why I felt like it was a perfect idea to go to Purina’s Cat Camp by myself during my lunch hour. I got to play with kittens while standing around and encouraging people to adopt them! It was a really beautiful experience. I never did understand why Cher didn’t care about Marky Mark planting that celebrity tree. It totally aligns with her values.

14. Making an Attempt at Climbing
I accepted the invite (from Moe, of course) to go to Brooklyn Boulders as another attempt at fear-facing. I’ve never been a huge fan of heights, as pretty well explained in this post from last year. But I keep hearing from EVERYONE how much fun this climbing thing is, and what a great workout it is and how great it makes you feel in your body and mind. Even though I walked into BB a little nervous, I can still say that I was far too confident in my climbing ability. It’s waay harder than it looks, and there are rules that really force you to be strategic (like, each time you climb you can only use holds of the same color). I think I made it to the top…twice. And we were there for about two hours. But it was only my first time, and I did feel how gratifying the achievement was. I also got to witness my self-fulfilling anxiety in full action: the more nervous I was, the sweatier my hands became, making it even more difficult to hold on, which, of course, made me even more nervous. But it all worked out in the end. If I wasn’t on the ground watching Moe “Six-Workouts-A-Week” Dabbagh completely school me, who would have taken a picture for his Instagram?

15. Catching up With Old Friends Over Home-Cooked Meals

I had my three-year anniversary of living in New York back in May, but no matter how used to the city life I become, I still feel my happiest when I’m in an intimate setting with a few of my closest friends. Bonus happy points if they’re from out of town. I happened to be having a tough and stressful week when I heard that my long time BFF Sarah Cousler was visiting Brooklyn from Asheville, NC. So we spent 3 days eating the delicious food she cooked, chilling out and catching up. Whatever the question in life, food and friends are the answer. Someone cross-stitch that on a pillow for me.

16. Taking My First Trip Upstate

I think the only way I can deal with living in the city is if I can get out on a semi-regular basis. On Labor Day weekend, James and I were due for a romantic outing, so we rented an upstate cottage on airbnb. Every time I reserve an airbnb I’m blown away, almost unsettled, by how easy it all is and how trusting and generous the hosts are. This effect was doubled by the fact that we had traveled to Woodstock, which is all about ~Organic/Sharing/Group/Love/Handmade/Peace/Giving~ vibes. I hiked a mountain and ate local meat and swam in a swimming hole and watched scary movies and went to bed early and slept late and was sad when I returned. I think that’s why the real Fabulous New York Adults who have houses in the Catskills drive 100 miles an hour up the interstate in order to maximize their vacay time, but we’re not quite that intense yet. Someday.

So, I had no shortage of adult misadventures this summer, but easily the best (and dumbest) of them happened on August 22nd, at Prospect Park’s Lefrak Center. The event I was drawn to was Wolf + Lamb’s Roller Disco party, which was the invite I received from Moe that week. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to continue my pattern of accidentally exercising while having fun. I didn’t realize when I bought the ticket, however, that Moe had been merely suggesting the event and not confirming his attendance. That is to say, he was going to be in Mexico that weekend, and I had just bought a ticket to go roller skating for the first time in 15 years, by myself.

Luckily, I was able to convince Bradford to come along for what ended up being a very exciting and hilarious attempt at remembering how to skate – well, really, learning for the first time since I was more of a blades kid. I slalomed through tiny children while bopping to 80s music and at a certain point I started really feeling myself. I was fierce, like one of those roller derby girls. I could totally do this.

At that exact moment I was cut off by an adorable five-year-old, and when I leaned back to dodge out of the way, my legs swung up in front of me into the air, Tiny Toon Adventures style, and I caught myself with my arm outstretched. I could feel tears welling up, but I wasn’t going to actually cry. What was I, a baby? I had to keep grooving and get over myself. So I did, for another couple of hours.

It wasn’t until later that night that I realized I couldn’t bend my arm (or unbend it, for that matter) past 90 degrees. Still, I figured I was just being a weenie about it. But on the advice of my brother Nate who fear-mongers me into seeking medical attention on a regular basis, I went out and got some x-rays the following Monday.

I was examined by a young-ish orthopedist on the Upper East Side.

“Where were you roller skating?” he asked.

“Prospect Park.”

“Oh, was it the Wolf + Lamb party?”

“Uh, yeah.” I responded, somewhat surprised.

“Nice. I almost went to that party. Those guys are my friends.”

I don’t know what it was about it, but there was something that felt very off about all this. I was an adult, getting examined by another adult, because of an incident at a roller skating party he also wanted to attend. I had felt pretty ashamed for getting injured in the first place. A kid would have just dusted herself off and gotten back up, and I’d somehow landed myself in the radiography room. But could I have been too old for this behavior if a guy well out of med school was cosigning it?

I was told to wear a sling for a week, which led to some hilarious T-rex-like attempts at completing tasks around the office and some elaborate lies about how I got the injury (you didn’t know I’m into ultimate fighting?!) But it didn’t stop me from going out into the world to find the next rooftop, enjoy the rest of my summer, and continue my pattern of laughing in the face of dumb decisions.

I don’t talk to Alex enough. You know Alex, my long time friend, the third big brother I never had, the one who has lived in LA for a few years and has what I think is an assistant-ish super Hollywoody-type job? We sometimes write together. Mostly he writes without me. He is very productive. I am very, well, you read the blog. One of Alex’s major pastimes is cyber-bullying me. He does this because he knows I don’t take criticism very well and he likes to take his emotions out on the people who will react most strongly. I’m trying to learn not to take it personally. Usually it ends up okay if I can keep my cool long enough to get him to apologize. We tried talking about this through text recently, and it quickly spun into a different conversation.

Me: I’m stressing myself out. You’re a real ballbuster you know

Alex: Same. I was having really bad panic attacks so now I’m not drinking caffeine But that won’t solve everything What’s going on w you

Me: Last night I had a dream I was raped by two guys and then my teeth turned to sand dollars and crumbled out of my head

Alex: Oh my god

Me: I’m sure that has to do with some underlying psychological something

Me: Things are definitely feeling unreal, but in a way that is almost too real.

Alex: Yes that’s a nice way to put it I just feel useless

Me: Essentially we’re all insane and nothing is really worth it, and all the things that seem good are bad and vice versa, happy people are actually sad, alcohol gets boring after a while, and you just find yourself asking, “what now?”

Alex: Seriously That’s why I’m like “going sober” I like weed and booze but it does nothing. Success is the only high I want.

Me: Truly I don’t really smoke weed ever. I find it upsets me often

Alex: AND a cute boy that is nice and loves me

Me: Unless I literally have nothing else that I should be doing

Alex: It fucks me UP

Me: Which is never

Alex: I can barely handle it Right! It just makes you anxious about doing things you need to do so you don’t and then you feel like shit

Me: I’m glad I have James. Things are going well, but I find myself a little too pleased with the habitual domestic things we do like make dinner, and I worry that my ambition is dwindling and that the sum of my accomplishments will be having kids and a yard and a husband and being normal, and that I’ll like thatBut maybe the secret is to just get a Xanax addiction and become a Stepford wife At least then there’d be hope for a reality show

Alex: I mean if you like that then who cares But kids KILL That’s my cynical wisdom

Me: I do love kids Maybe for my 25th birthday I’ll freeze an egg

Alex: You literally can’t do anything with kids I’m sure they are great! Lol It is the future

Me: I’m going to write a funny mom book

Alex: YEA but that’s not a reason to have kids

Me: It’ll be called “mommy why are you crying: stories of how my children ruined my life”

Alex: You have like 12 more years My mom had me at 36 and I’m completely normal ….. Lolol ok

Me: Yeah but she had two kids before you

Alex: That’s true

Me: You’re supposed to have ur first like Basically when ur my age

Alex: Does that make it better? Wow But it’s just biology!

Me: Yeah

Alex: Drink those voices away!

Me: But seriously I’m freezing my eggs

Alex: Might as well Mary is already 26

Me: Turning 25 is like

Alex: Jesus But you see these cool couples with their kids and it doesn’t seem so fun

Me: Oh hey next big bday I’m old as shit

Alex: It just seems like prison Dude 25 SUCKS 26 is better But ppl will say it’s the other way around

Me: Not depressing, I mean kind of nice and exciting. I don’t hate my life or anything so I’m not like disappointed in myselfYou always disagree with me on this tho Ages

Alex: Oh god I am. On getting older?? I think I’ll be chill when I’m 35

Me: On which ages are the worst

Alex: Bahaha

Me: Idk if I’ll ever be chill? Let’s be honest

Alex: 20s are just hard. It’s just weird seeing all these people I know getting married Hahahahah I think so You’re pretty cool

Me: Basically I just keep telling myself that every stupid failure and shitty experience will make a fun story someday And at the very least maybe I’ll have a rich husband, if I’m lucky someone I love Woo dream big Thanks btw you too

Alex: Hahaha Yames

Me: It’s not that I should suck less at life, it’s that I should be writing more about sucking at it

Alex: He seems great to me Mmmm yea

Me: He’s great in a lot of ways. You’d like him But he’s an easy target. Sensitive

Alex: I think I probably would He IS sensitive I think he’s just Italian

Me: He’s a Capricorn And he’s only half Italian But I like that he’s traditionally masculine in a lot of ways. Plus he loves me. I guess that’s really the point here. You wanna start a literary zine?

Alex: I like that And he’s sexy

Me: Yeah he is

Alex: To me Lol In a platonic way

Me: And to me, obviously His body is incredible it like sucks that he won’t dress for it He buys his work shirts at Costco Which is like hot in its own way

My boyfriend standing in front of his high school alma mater and doing some pose that I choose to pretend is tai chi

A picture of Lindsay Lohan’s family’s house I took on a bike ride through Merrick, NY. Lindsay and James have the same hometown. This is relevant because it just is.

Alex: A zine sounds fun but I have a lot on my plate at the moment I can’t make a commitment He is so normcore but not even bc I don’t think he’s post indie

Me: I was mostly joking

Alex: This is v funny

Me: I was going to toss out the potential title “are any of us doing anything”

Alex: Most frat guys are like that though. When he makes more money you can help him out.

Me: Yeah he’s not normcore he’s just norm, like I’m aware that he interacts with the world without quite as many levels of irony as me, and I’m fine with it, because it’s all bullshit anyway The fact that I’m fine with it is what makes me scared I secretly wanna be norm But I wanna be norm in this like fantasy sort of way, like only because New York is a dystopia in so many ways. Like I don’t even wanna be norm I wanna like actually live inside a sears catalog or something

Alex: Hahahahha Norm is the new weird tho Weird as we know it is the new norm and it’s kinda tired Like being OUT THERE AND WEIRD Hahahah sears

Me: Yeah. Doesn’t it seem like society is tricking itself into believing homogeneity is a style choice when actually we are probably just giving in to the pointlessness of asserting individualism in the digital age

We might as well all turn into iPhones. That’d be phat

Alex: Cyborgs is the next thing

Me: Borgcore

Alex: It is pointless I’ve been saying it for years what’s next? Bc if you try to assert your individuality and everyone is trying to because that’s the norm, it’s impossible so the movement, it like collapses on itselfThat’s why I think fashion will die eventually

Me: People just revert to indulging in the simple commercial pleasures of life

Alex: No one believes me

Me: Eventually our generation will give in and assimilate People just get tired

Alex: We’re all going to wear government controlled silver jumpsuits

Me: Yeah but even without government control

Alex: That help us live in a harsh world where it’s too hot or too cold cuz we fucked everything up

Me: I have a theory that people will basically control themselves

Alex: Yeah I guess

Me: And trick themselves into thinking it’s individual expression

Alex: Government matters less than corporations

Me: Like social media, everyone was all worried back in the day the government was going to be spying on us, then we just willingly started putting every detail of our lives out in public. I agree with you, individuality is played out.

Alex: Hmmmmm You just have to have fun with whatever you can While you can

Me: In fact the millennial infatuation and ultimate disappointment with individuality may be the beginning of its death

Alex: Ugh on the plus side my apartment is nice

Me: Aw yay

Alex: Yeah let’s capitalize on the death of individuality

Me: A monopoly on identity If you can’t beat em join em. I’m sure that’s what Orwell was trying to say.

—-

Life is plastic, it’s fantastic

We complain about being out of touch with reality as though there is any reality to speak of, and we know that’s not true. In June’s mercury retrograde I attempted to do a bit of soul searching, some personal and some societal, I guess. Whether intentional or not, I live on the line between high and low culture, shallow and meaningful, absorbed in such trivialities as my Internet stats while failing to ignore my yearn for meaning in my actual life. Just like everyone else, I can’t really decide what is “real” or what is “meaningful.” I’ll watch KUWTK in the suburbs with my boyfriend and enjoy it. I’ll go to an exhibition of artworks praising Kim Kardashian as a deity and agree with it. I’ll read an article about the OJ trial and the connection between the Kardashian family and other reality show stars, in which they are dubbed the murderers of popular culture, and I’ll agree with that too. I exist in two worlds; one is where instagram likes are currency, where Heidi Montag is a genius and looking good is the equivalent of reaching nirvana. In the other world, holy cow, I actually want to emotionally invest in substantial things.

Open bar selfie at art party called The Passion of Kim Kardashian

We are living in a world where the art, the consumption, the media, the criticism, the satire and the daily fucking struggle are so simultaneous that writing about this, even caring about it, feels redundant. It can sometimes feel like we have only three options. Lower our expectations and settle down, go to grad school so at least the conversations we have about relevant things will be somewhat intelligent, or act like a child forever. Who even has time to be a good person? Who has time to make themselves happy, or the world a better in a real way? If the struggle for substance and meaning is Sisyphean, then why even bother to stress? Might as well drink kool-aid with the Church of Kim K. If I’m ever nostalgic for the nineties it’s because the nineties were the time I had to do the least. While my social anxiety was at an all-time high, I was actually unironically enjoying the pleasures of suburbia and consumerism without asking any questions. Slip-n-slides and trampolines were making me happy, just like they were supposed to. I wasn’t disappointed, I wasn’t looking for beauty in truth, I just assumed this was the truth. I was privileged, and I may not have known it, but I wasn’t deluded into thinking I didn’t want to be. Reality TV is totally bullshit but nobody really cares, so maybe life can be like that. After all, whatever we accept as true becomes the reality. You might as well put on the costume. You might as well pretend. And at the end of the day, you might as well participate in the scam. It’s almost the same thing as having hope. Right? What’s so great about the truth anyway? When it comes to my future, I don’t want to know the odds. I’ll keep my blinders on for now, and when things get too rough, I’ll visit someone’s neighborhood pool.

Everyone has their limits. As you know, I reached mine with winter about a month ago. Shortly after, from eating nothing but pasta and living off couch cushion change for weeks, I surpassed my limit with the “between job” lifestyle. Three sentences in, I am already pushing my limit for this blog post, because I’d rather be watching House of Cards. Seriously, am I the only person on earth who didn’t watch the second season in a single day? To be fair, there have been a few other things (and a few other shows) on my plate.When I last Blobbed (I sometimes affectionately refer to this thing you’re reading as my Blob), I was sunning in the frozen tundra that is Martha’s Vineyard. That is, lying prostrate on a sofa and delighting my older brother with this year’s version of My Plans to Change My Life as he administered vodka cranberries into my system via central line. What in the summer is a bustling a tourist community is for all intents and purposes shut down this time of year, although we did hit up a bar on the first night complete with live island jams and some seriously drunk moms and dads. Since I majored in Drunk Senior Citizens in college they are a bit of my expertise, and I felt right at home, closing my eyes and vibing to the serious saxophone tunage. Truthfully, I was just wasted, and a weekend with a bunch of old irrelevant beach strangers was just what I’d needed after being trapped in my house for the whole month of January. That, and unlimited hot baths and sandwiches and sexting and episodes of Forensic Files. And that’s exactly what I got, plus six inches of snow, House Hunters on demand, solicited and unsolicited relationship advice, endless shit talk, and 10 hours of sleep a night. We even got a nice hike in there, which for Nate means literally running uphill through the woods. But hey, I had some calories to kill. Plus, winter in the vineyard might be the most beautifully spooky thing I’ve ever seen. Venus went direct just in time for Mercury to slide into retrograde, so after I rode the megabus back to New York and successfully repressed the entire experience, I was prepared for things to be a little fucked up. And I was right. My computer was suddenly on the fritz, not holding a charge, shutting off in the middle of things. I was terrified and frantically backing things up when I could, certain that this was the end for my best friend. Meanwhile, servers were down all over the place. I couldn’t get burritos on Grubhub when I wanted them. The people at Chipotle were forgetting to add cheese. Okay, so most of my problems were Mexican food related, but I’m sure Susan Miller will tell you it was all fucking Mercury’s fault.

The day after I returned, I met up with Reid and a few others for a “night on the town,” which according my version of Winter Nightlife meant drinking at my apartment until 1, stumbling and grumbling over snow piles on the way to the bar where I’d nurse a cocktail for 2 hours and do a bunch of poppers, before hopping in a cab home that was clearly out of my budget. On this particular night, I calculated that I would need four 24 ounce Coronas to get the party started, so by the end I was a complete and total mess in the head a la 2011-2012 (without the assaults, arrests or afterhours). I was asleep by 3:30 and spent the rest of the next 24 hours shivering and shitting and feeling sorry for myself. Was nearly 100 ounces of beer, two double gin and tonics and a bottle of poppers suddenly TOO MUCH for me to handle? Had I gone soft in my old age? Or had I simply been putting up with hangovers of this magnitude for the last five-plus years of my life and could no longer choose to accept it? This is why I can really only fuck with Tito’s vodka. I don’t even think it gets you drunk I mean it’s basically Evian. 5 out of 5 doctor’s recommend it! Or was that judges and rehab? Gotcha.

In a spectacularly romantic gesture a few weeks prior, my significant other had bought me a plane ticket to come spend Valentine’s weekend with him before I started my new job. Because I hadn’t quite been sufficiently depressed and sex deprived enough in the frigid weeks since I’d last seen him, mother nature decided to bring another fuckface of a blizzard our way just before my departure. What would I do if this flight was cancelled? I missed him so much. And I thought about it and I’d tried but I just could not masturbate anymore. I called JetBlue to take proactive measures at switching to better flight times, asking all kinds of questions and begging for advice and using words like “tarmac.” Ultimately I decided to take a gamble and keep my original flight for the morning after the last day of snow, and somehow managed to depart and arrive on time.

In Chapel Hill I encountered the expected level of collective dismay when my crop of local bff’s all realized my time was spoken for by the boy who’d brought me there, and every moment that I was not [insert disgusting sex act here] I felt really bad about not being able to see them. That being said, I also had delicious meals, intimate moments, eye contact and body contact with the person I love, so I wasn’t exactly overcome with sadness. That Saturday, in accordance with my NormCore boyfriend’s plans, I got to see a side of Chapel Hill I’d never seen before, one that is familiar to almost all of its other students and alumn: Frat Life. I even saw a sport on TV. I won’t say they were the highlights of my weekend, but they certainly made me feel one with the people. I was like Frank Underwood at that Civil War reenactment. I wasn’t really about it, but I admired their conviction.By Sunday the bae and I had to say our goodbyes. I was headed back to Brooklyn once again, this time to do actual “work” and make “money” so I could “live.” What a total drag. Before my flight my mother met us at the Starbucks in the lobby of the airport to say hello and goodbye to me and be introduced to my new partner for the first time. First we had the pleasure of telling her we met on fucking Twitter. Then she asked him how he was doing handling “all of this,” and pointed at me. “She can be kind of a lot.” I would have been upset had I not known her for 24 years and thus been absolutely certain she was complimenting me in her own way.

As I walked through security in mismatched socks covered in my boyfriend’s roommate’s dog’s hair, I dreaded going back to New York. I knew I’d miss my boyfriend, but was it more than that? I hadn’t wanted to be there for a while, but I didn’t know what I was running from either. Responsibility? Chasing the dream? Watching Forensic Files alone?

As I stepped into my snow-stained uggs at the end of the TSA line, I was not a sorority girl, not yet a woman. But I was glad that, at the very least, I had someone to eat burritos with on Skype.

In the summer of 2010 I once drank so much four loko that I staple-gunned my boot to my ankle. I must have looked so insane and pathetic in the attic of my much older friend’s house, sitting on the carpet with my legs in a W, laughing and crying a little as I pulled the metal out. I was 20 years old. I had no idea yet how to order a drink in a bar, but it wasn’t the first time I’d gotten drunk and hurt myself.

—–

A few days before I returned from North Carolina, while sexting a photo of my naked butt, I got an unexpected phone call about starting a new “gig,” (what the kids are calling jobs these days). It was a welcome opportunity since as you know I spent the major part of the last month fucking around, drinking cocktails and trying to get rid of my tan lines. But when I was torn from my spot on my childhood trampoline and catapulted into normal working hours back in lower manhattan, it was quite an adjustment. Every morning when my alarm goes off I am convinced there must be some way around it. This usually leads to a very rude awakening, followed by a lot of running through my apartment yelling “SHIT,” a lot of makeup and hair products being shoved into a giant canvas bag, and a lot of primping on the train.

It’s the same way I got ready for high school every morning. I’d guzzle 20 ounces of generously sugared black coffee in the passenger seat of my father’s car at 7 am, sometimes after sneaking out, taking drugs from strangers and only coming home to change my shirt. I’d drag the torn edges of my American Eagle jeans into first period hoping no one would notice I was five minutes late, or that I’d only slept twelve hours that week. In high school I was the girl who was greeted with giggles and whispers of “did you hear?” when I entered a room. My grades were impressive, I brushed my teeth twice a day and took a bath every night. But on any given weekend I’d probably drank half a bottle of watermelon burnette’s and gone skinny dipping in the backyard of a house party with someone’s boyfriend, or girlfriend, or both. I’d probably thrown up in a bush. Cheap liquor will do that to the girl who doesn’t eat. But I was gonna be famous. One day I’d be an Olsen twin.

—–

The summer of 2010, the one after we burned our house down, led to a winter, a spring, a subsequent summer and fall. By then I was great at ordering drinks in bars and guzzling bottles of sailor jerry on the back of my boyfriend’s motorcycle. I was even better at getting in drunken fights with that boyfriend almost daily. Some nights there were screaming matches in the streets. Other nights he’d carry me into our house over his shoulder after I had one too many shots. By my 22nd birthday I’d finished college, which might actually be the worst thing for a drinking problem. I was older, but I wasn’t an Olsen. I was depressed, directionless, 15 pounds heavier and never leaving the house. Until one day I did, and I ended up in jail. But that’s another story.

After the mandatory alcohol therapy and the somewhat sobering shame of making the front page of The Slammer, I started to get my act together. My unhealthy relationship had ended during a tumultuous Mercury Retrograde. I had a full time job where my coworker was a convicted felon on work release with an unlikely knack for life-coaching. I was spending one Wednesday a month dressing in my mother’s suits and hiding my undercut for court appearances to end up with a clean record. I was texting a funny writer boy in New York. I wanted to take risks, be stronger, do great things with my life and heart. So I started, and eventually I began to rise like a phoenix, I guess, from metaphorical ashes this time.

—–

Since then, I’ve only had a handful of dark drunken moments, most of which I laugh off and write about here. Once I cussed out a room full of innocent friends after drinking an unknown amount of four loko, which, by the way, is no longer my beverage of choice. Twice, maybe three times I’ve blacked out and cried, barefoot on a New York sidewalk. More times than I care to admit, I’ve looked into the wrong person’s eyes for too long.

Two weeks ago I went to sushi with my older brother in Durham, North Carolina. The site of my post-collegiate depression seemed so much cuter outside the haze. I’m sure it was because I’d moved on. I had prospects. I had a job. I’d worked in close proximity to major celebrities when less than two years prior I was watching them on apple TV, alone and hungover with the curtains drawn. He told me over martinis that he’d been reading my blog, and my first thought was fear. Embarrassment. When my brother was my age, he got married and had his first child. I’ve always admired him for that, the way he transformed almost overnight into this professional, responsible man. A daddy. Now 34 years old, he has a third baby on the way.

“Your life isn’t that crazy every night, though, is it?” he asked me. No, not always. And hopefully in the coming years it will be even less so. All of the stories are true; I take club drugs, I wake up too late, I pay for my groceries in quarters, sometimes I forget to eat and I drink too much and I say the wrong thing. I still ask my parents for money every now and then. But I turn 24 soon. I want some of those things to change, and I’m gonna have to figure out how.

Some days you get to work on time. Some days your hair looks perfect and your shirt’s right-side-out. Some days you exercise and some days you’re in love and there’s money in the bank and your shoes are tied and the kitty litter box is clean.

Some days your ambition rules you, your delusions roam freely, driving your life to those high points you are sure it will achieve someday. And some days you’re heartbroken, eating a can of beans in the tub. “But at least,” you think, “I remembered to bathe.”

“I wanna blog outside today!” I thought, after waking up at the crack of 12:30 to the smell of hot piss pouring through my window. One entire tube of SPF 100+ sunscreen in my eye, one makeshift lawnchair desk and one Carrera Bakery iced coffee later, here I am frying away tearfully in an outdoor sauna of cat urine and Colt 45. In other words, I reaaally needed a thigh tan.
Now that summer is in full swing and the first hydrants have been opened on the streets of Bushwick, all bets are officially off. Of course, it’s had a bit of a rough start. Despite the fact that it’s been raining almost every day for a fucking month and the fact that I have no real job security (I’m referring to it as “freelancing”), these past few weeks I’ve been out of control and chilling like a trust fund baby.
Towards the end of last month, when I wasn’t sitting alone in my apartment watching old Parks and Rec episodes and sucking cat hair out of the air with my dustbuster, I spent most of my time doing #dabs with my new BF, finding creative new ways to entertain ourselves sexually (being spanked with a rubber chicken and singing Unchained Melody with a penis in my mouth both come to mind). As the season was coming to a close at my job, I was also trying to balance my heavy work load with a LOT of heavy drinking. I began one particularly eventful evening by transforming my cable-friendly maxi skirt into a club-friendly mini dress after work, using a few accessories from the prop closet…including a large coffee cup of alcohol.
As the cab approached our destination I guzzled my cup’s contents, forgetting it was mostly if not completely full of gin. I was reaching for my ID when it became clear I was about to lose my lunch, dinner and dessert, so I motioned for Talia to follow me around the corner. The next thing I knew she was watching me puke on the sidewalk as I held my own hair back and gave the thumbs up to passing cars. Afterwards I winked and strutted into the bar where I would spend the rest of my night buying beers and shots for myself, giving them away to strangers, and attempting to twerk* in Talia’s face to Lil Kim’s “Magic Stick.” I was in true form.
*note: I can’t twerk. But let’s be real. Neither can Miley.

Finally the time had come: My Big Things were stepping off their respective megabuses to finally join me in the city. Some for the summer, some forever. Their company is invaluable to me, even though the photos from our first night together seem to indicate that I was alone, having a somewhat awful time at a Hot 97 party and what appears to be a quite excellent time at the Mcdonald’s on Delancey street.
I had 10 days off between seasons at work and I was spending them the only way I knew how. Alcoholic smoothies in the middle of the day, shopping for accessories on Knickerbocker avenue, tanning in Central Park, sweating my ass off at Bossa Nova Club and eating 1500 calories of shitty food for every meal.

I keep telling myself I’m going to work out this summer and lose that bit of cellulite right below my asscheeks I affectionately refer to as my Second Butt, but I can’t seem to make time for it what with all the drinking and sleeping and laying in the sun. I did, however, attempt to mix exercise with productivity by weeding my entire backyard to make it Barbecue Ready. This included a hefty amount of manual labor. I even scooped the animal carcasses off my patio once and for all, and even managed to bleach away the dark spots their bodies left on the concrete…sort of. This allowed for Patrick and I to attempt to relax in the grass on multiple occasions, only to drown ourselves in sweat. Tanning is miserable most of the time, unless of course you have Bacardi lemonade and a pizza from Tony’s.

Before the string of nightlife bummers that was to come shortly, we managed to have one amazing night that began with, like, an artisan margarita and taco party in a gorgeous Williamsburg loft (complete in typical fashion with discussions about the state of Azealia Banks’ career and the end of last season’s GIRLS), followed by a trek to an unknown salsa bar with espresso tequila shots. This led to a bizarre stairwell discovery and ended with a refreshing banana bowl at the Marcy stop while wearing a pair of jeans as a jacket.The risk you take when you follow the scene is that the hype and expectations for the event will outweigh any amount of fun you could possibly have. The crowd will probably be full of try-hards and there will be too many people and too long of a line and the drinks will be too expensive, and the headlining act won’t come on until four hours after you arrive. You will end up leaving early, having gotten dressed to the nines for absolutely nothing except a great selfie you took on your way to the club. The highlight of your night will be eating a Filet o’ Fish cross-legged in a gutter in the no man’s land between the West Village and Tribeca. You could end up like me the night I tried to see Lil Kim at Westgay. But, the selfie was great.Our sad state of affairs continued in the form of relentless torrential downpours for the rest of the week. The only saving grace was in the form of my beloved friend Bill who had come to the city to crash for his birthday week. Patrick and I reluctantly followed him to meet some friends at a bar in the aptly named HELL’S KITCHEN. The best part of the evening was the drag show at Industry (which isn’t saying much). The second best was the sushi, I guess?So as not to disrupt the theme of the week (shoddy dining and gay bars and never ending rain) the next day we went to Bay Leaf in Williamsburg. The service was terrible. The food took forever. They charged us $22 for what turned out to be a bottle of Barefoot. Then just as we were about to storm out I accidentally set a plastic bag on fire and it melted all over the table.

The next part of the evening was our private party in the back room of Fada complete with $5 cocktails and Winston’s beach disco set. Afterwards we braved the weather and spent the remainder of the evening drinking cheap beers at the Metropolitan, but not before I got splashed in the face by a speeding 4Runner.If they were hiding it at all before, this much rain really brings out the absurdity in New Yorkers. The other day I saw homeless man washing his feet in a street puddle, which is my second most favorite homeless man moment to the time I saw a guy drop a slice of pizza on the ground and then drunkenly lie down on the sidewalk to continue eating it. Whether or not to be amused by these things is a constant moral dilemma of mine. Meanwhile, any time I see a stray cat, raining or not, I spend 45 minutes crying in an alleyway. But OH IT’S GOOD TO LAUGH AGAIN.But perhaps no shitty night compares to what I dealt with last week, when I took my pink boobs and YOLO belt out to Bossa Nova for Physical Therapy and Slava. Standing under the AC unit on the crowded dance floor, my friends and I took a tiny amount of what we thought was molly.
Turns out it was speed! I didn’t sleep for three days! It was by far one of the most nerve racking, frustrating, miserable experiences I have ever had to date, next to that time I drank two bottles of robitussin freshman year of college and I held on to the edges of my bed for 36 hours waiting for the spins to stop before Greg came and dumped me in a bathtub of ice water.
I did, however, have a beautiful morning before slipping into my amphetamine freak out.
The following week I went back to work, 10-7 office days to prepare for next season. I dumped about 5 iced coffees per day onto my shriveling insides just to get through it, but when the week came to an end and nearly all of Team Big Things (minus a few essential members I DID NOT FORGET YOU) got together for SHADE #2 and took this beautiful family photo that will likely be my Christmas card come fall.This is how we chill.